Joel Gregory - To Live Is Christ To Die Is Gain

11:20 What a delight it is to be with you on this Thanksgiving day. Coming to you from the chapel of Baylor's George W. Truitt Theological Seminary at the invitation of Director of African American Work for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, my friend and brother Oza Jones. It is a special honor to be able to open the Word of God with you today when Christians all over the nation are joining together in a spirit of thanksgiving and joy. As we look toward the rest of this year, I want this Thanksgiving Day to give you a single thing that can change every day from today until the rest of this year is done and the beginning of the next. And that thing is the power of being a one thing person. If you have a Bible, would you take a look with me at Philippians chapter 1 as I read these words written from the Apostle Paul's prison cell in Rome back to a church he hadn't seen in 10 years, but who remembered him with a gift for his support, this might be called history's most famous thank you note.

12:42 Let me read the Word of God into your hearing. Philippians 1.12 I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is in Christ. And most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear. Some proclaim Christ from envy and from rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel. The others, they proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but intending to increase my suffering and my imprisonment.

13:42 What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true, and in this I rejoice. Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance. It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. And here it comes. Here is a single priority for the remainder of the year. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Would you pray with me a moment?

14:37 Our risen Lord, I pray now that the words of my mouth, speaking from the meditations of my heart, will be empowered by your spirit. That wherever those are listening, this will be a message to them, heart and soul. In Jesus' name, amen. Have you ever noticed that the people we remember are often people who go by initials and they're remembered for one thing that they said? For example, walk softly and carry a big stick. He was known by his initials, TR. We have nothing to fear but fear itself, FDR. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, JFK.

15:36 And perhaps most famous of all, I have a dream, MLK. Thousands of streets bearing that name because he had a dream. Isn't it interesting some people's life, their priorities, their very essence can be reduced to a single phrase. If you were to say that for the Apostle Paul, it's right here in the text that I read from Holy Scripture, Philippians 1.21. For me to live is Christ. Now it's interesting what he didn't say on the front porch of this sermon. let it remind you to say he didn't say for me to live is the church. Paul loved churches, planted churches, wrote churches, encouraged churches, rebuked churches, but he didn't say for me to live is the church. Church is a divine human institution, but it doesn't belong in this sentence. Somebody said to dwell above with the saints in love, that'll be glory. To dwell below with some of the saints I know, that's a different story.

16:42 He didn't say for me to live as the church. He didn't say for me to live as my ministry. Now, Paul was a minister, a minister, two ministers. Do you know if you say for me to live as ministry, you may wind up like a man in a picture I saw in the newspaper. He was sitting on one of the cabs of those giant 18 wheelers that deliver the gas. but he'd run out of gas while he was delivering the gas. If you say for me to live is ministry, you'll run out of gas. No, no, only one name belongs in that sentence and that is for me to live is Christ, the inexhaustible person. You come back to the same well again and again and you find new living water. He's the sun that rises afresh every day.

17:36 He's the tithe that comes in every day for me to live as Christ. Now, I want to tell you some practical ways that that's changed my life when I'm at my best. And for the rest of this year, it can change yours. For you to say, for me to live as Christ, enables you to overcome present disappointments. How many people have said, I'm ready for 2020 to be gone? It's been a year of different kind of appointments for very people. But look what Paul says. He says, I want you to know that what's happened to me has helped the gospel. What had happened to him? He's in jail. You know, Paul wrote four letters from jail. This is one of them.

18:27 and in not one of them did he ever say the first thing I would put in a letter to my church if I was in jail. I'd say, get me out. Paul never said that. In fact, he said just because I'm in jail in Rome, it's advanced the gospel. Now he had hoped to come to Rome to collect a mission offering and march off the map with the gospel and plant the flag of Christ in Spain. But instead of that, he's in jail in Rome. His aspiration was to take up a missionary offering. His situation was to be in jail in Rome. That's a lot of dislocation between your aspiration and your situation. I'm sure somebody aspired for great things in 2020, and practically none of them that you expected came to pass. Listen to this word.

19:23 Paul said, just because I'm in prison in Rome, the gospel hacks its way forward in a new way. The word he uses, advance, referred to somebody marching in front of an army, cutting their way through the underbrush so the rest of the army can come. He says the gospel has a new elevation. Look, the whole Praetorian Guard. Now that was the creme de la creme, the tops of the tops of the Roman army, the people who guarded Caesar and his family. Some of them had been chained to Paul for hours at a time. Can you imagine what it was like to be chained to the Apostle Paul for a few hours? Those chains became electric chains, transmitting the power of the gospel through those chains. I'm sure when one of those soldiers came to relieve the other, let's say Lepinus came to relieve Max Cinchus. He said, Max, how's it been?

20:16 And Mac said, Lev, you won't believe what you're in for. All this man talks about is the fact he was on a road one day and he saw a light brighter than the sun and he met somebody named Jesus who's risen from the dead and I think he really believes it. You see, when you're around Paul, to be chained to him was to hear the gospel. And that went like a buzz through the 10,000 soldiers of the Praetorian. If Paul hadn't been in jail there, that wouldn't have happened. But he said the gospel had not only a new elevation, it had a new penetration. Look, he says everywhere else. He says, just because I'm in jail in Rome, the gospel's being heard everywhere. When the women shop in the marketplace, they're talking about that Jew named Paul who says Jesus rose from the dead. When the senators met in the Roman Senate in their togas, have you heard about that prisoner Paul? And when the children played on the strided streets of Rome, they were singing songs about Paul everywhere else because Paul had shaken the capital with the good news that Jesus has been raised from the dead.

21:20 Now come close to me. Sometimes I've preached a sermon like this and somebody at the door has said, well, preacher, that's good for you. You just don't understand my circumstances. And they act as if they're the first person in history who ever had circumstances. Let me assure you of this. All God's children have got circumstances. And none of them are an exception to what Paul is saying here. When you can write over your circumstances, for me to live is Christ. He can transform every disappointment. Stories flood me when I think of this.

22:07 Here's Dietrich Bonhoeffer, confessing German Christian. faithful to the gospel in the face of Hitler, stripped of his ordination. He's finally standing at an ugly little concentration camp on April 9th, 1945, about to be hung for the gospel of Jesus by the Nazis. Fifty years after he was hung, a Nazi doctor said, I've never seen anybody die like Pastor Bonhoeffer. His last words were, for me an end, but a beginning. What awful circumstances. And yet now he belongs to the whole world. Elizabeth Elliot was a young woman, missionary married to a missionary, Jim Elliot. He was taking the gospel to the Aucas, an indigenous tribe in Ecuador. He thought he was making progress, but then out on a sandy river bank, he and four other young missionary men were speared to death with poison spears.

23:08 Here's Elizabeth left with a little baby, a young widow. She went back to Gordon-Conwell in New England, began to write books about it, wrote the book Through Gates of Splendor that became a movie, became a world-famous Christian writer about God's mercy and grace in her life, teaching, writing, radio programs, interviews. The thing that was against her became the opportunity for Christ. I don't know what you think your circumstances are this Thanksgiving day, but I know this. If you can say for me to live is Christ, he's able to transform disappointing circumstances. But is that all? No. Go a little further.

24:01 When you say for me to live is Christ, it enables you to overcome difficult relationships. Here's Paul in jail in Rome for the sake of the gospel. But look what he says. He says right outside his prison cell, there are some people preaching just to irritate Paul. They were probably demeaning him, belittling him, questioning his motives, saying if he's such a great apostle, What's he in jail for? Remember, Paul didn't found the Roman church. He wrote the Roman church, and he was the famous apostle to the Gentiles who showed up after the church at Rome had been founded. Maybe some of those who were taunting him and jeering him and dissing him were founders of the church at Rome. Sometimes the green-eyed monster of jealousy sits right down in the church pew.

24:58 You may have been the object of it. Or they may have been those people who dogged Paul's heels everywhere he went. They were called the Judaizers, the Jew makers. They were right behind him saying, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. You can't be a Christian without first becoming a Jew. And to do that, you must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. They turned the gospel upside down. Maybe they were hounding Paul, preaching just to irritate him, to make his manacles cut into his wrist or his fetters cut into his ankle bones. Somebody was preaching to irritate Paul. Their mistake was they thought he was just as little as they were. You never make a mistake by being big and saying for me to live is Christ. Because of what he said. He said some are preaching out of spite, some out of goodwill.

25:49 And then he says, what's it to you? I rejoice because Christ is preached. Somebody was speaking the other day of preachers and said, well, I know 2,000 some odd preachers, some of them odder than others. You know, it's never up to us to judge the motives of those who serve Christ. Remember that last beautiful appearance of Jesus in John's gospel? He, seven, had gone out fishing, thinking about going back to fishing after the resurrection when that stranger on the shore, remember, told him to cast the net. He broke it so full of fish. Peter jumps in, swims back to shore, and it's the risen Lord. And John's up there too.

26:43 And Jesus tells Peter, when you're young, you went where you wanted to. When you're old, they're going to take you where you don't want to go. Peter looked at John and said, well, what's this man going to do? You know, that's one of the fatal flaws in Christian life, and that is trying to plan the life and ministry of other people. Jesus said, what's it to you? You follow me, Peter. That's really what Paul says here. I can't judge the motives of everybody preaching Christ, but if Christ is being preached, I'm going to rejoice, whether it's in a cathedral by someone with a lot of letters after his name or if in a storefront by persons who can't rhyme the subject and the verb they're preaching Christ. Clovis Chapel, great preacher of another era told about one of those early transatlantic navigators who wanted to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. When he got 2,000 miles out to sea he heard something scratching gnawing back under the primitive controls of the little cockpit and he saw insulation falling down on the floor he found out that it was a rat a stowaway rodent that was eating away on the wires to get the nourishment that's in the cloth insulation he remembered that rats can't live in thin air so he took the plane up and up and up till he got up 20,000 feet in the atmosphere where the rat fell out.

28:14 Is it too much to say that there's somebody gnawing on you right now? If they are, take them up to the atmosphere where you say, for me to live is Christ. And you'll be shocked what that can do. Paul put it another way in Colossians 3. He said, set your thoughts, your mind on what is above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. A single priority can not only change disappointing circumstances and enable you to endure difficult relationships. Let me say one other thing. It enables you to face future uncertainties. This Thanksgiving sitting around wherever you're watching me, there's not anybody here who isn't facing future uncertainties. Maybe international, national.

29:10 All of us know what's around us every single day right now. Maybe personal, maybe so deep that you'd be embarrassed even to tell a psychiatrist about them. You face future uncertainties. If you did, look at Paul. He's been in prison waiting on trial for his life and the verdict belonged to a crazy man, Nero. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Every day Paul waited to be summoned. Maybe he'd been there two years now under house arrest on the top floor of a house with Roman guards chained to him. Up or down? Listen to Paul. Paul's not anxious, he's not worried, he's not beside himself in fact in this very letter in chapter 4 he said let those things that distract you with anxiety with thanksgiving present them to the Lord and the peace of God will mount guard over your heart and he was just as good as he said because he weighs two things, he said on one hand I'd like to depart and be with Christ I'd like to loosen the ropes that hold me to the dock in time and sail out through the harbor into eternity.

30:29 He says that'd be far, far, far better. He's ready to go. But then he said on the other hand, it's necessary for you, for others that I stay. I'd like to get out of here and plant a church in Spain and maybe write 2nd and 3rd Philippians. Either option is good. Remember Shakespeare's famous character Hamlet? He's the prince of Denmark. His daddy was the king. He's good to be the prince. Then daddy died taking a nap in the garden. Sixty days later, daddy's ghost appears and tells Hamlet, your uncle, my brother poisoned me, avenge me. Well, Hamlet sees daddy's ghost. He's either got to kill his uncle and leave his mother twice a widow because she's married his uncle or he's got to live with his daddy's ghost.

31:25 And because of that he says those famous words, to be or not to be. Now for Hamlet, either one was awful. If he lived, he had to live with the awful thing that had been to his father. If he took himself out like his sister Ophelia did, he faced the raw red throat of death grave in the eternity. that didn't look too good either. He said either option is bad. Paul says no. He says no. He says if I live, it's service. If I go, well it's gain because this tent that I live in will be dissolved but I have a temple not made with human hands eternal in the heavens. Either way, ready to stay, ready to go. you're not ready to live in our kind of times unless you can live with that kind of certainty not just the threat of the virus but every other threat that comes across our lives we are like the mist of the morning high noon gone like the grass of the field withered at the end of the day how fast the shuttle of life goes I'm standing here on a campus where I first walked on that campus at 17 years of age right here now as a much older gentleman I look back how quickly those decades speed by and every day now faster are you ready to say for me to live is Christ and to die is gain if you have as the single priority of your life what Paul says for me to live as Christ it can be.

33:20 You see the day came. The day came when one of those praetorian guards had to come get Paul out of that prison. At the end he was in the mammoth team. I think he'd become a Christian. He lifted up the iron grate that was at the ceiling of that underground prison and said, Brother Paul, I've come to get you and take you where I don't want to take you and tell you what I didn't want to tell you. And Paul said, Max, Max, I've told you for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And they lifted the apostle Paul, author of Romans and 12 other books on your New Testament, namesake of millions of boys. They lifted him out and they take him out the south gate of Rome. I've been down the road. You can walk on the very stones. And when they got to the end of it, there was an ax man with a howdyard, a long pole with an axe on the end of it. I wonder if he looked at Paul and said, face down or face up?

34:18 Paul said, face up. You want a mask on? No, I want eyes wide open. And for just a moment, it was the flash of the sunlight on that blade. And in the next moment, it was the glory of God in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. He breathed new air and it was celestial. He stood on another shore and it was a sea of glass. And I'm sure he said, indeed, to live is Christ and to die is gain. right where you're gathered. There's no reason that certainty cannot be yours right now. And you can experience the power of being a one thing person. It will transform disappointments.

35:14 It will change difficult relationships. And it will enable you to face life's future uncertainties. Pray with me. Eternal God and Heavenly Father, by your powerful Holy Spirit, give wings to these words. Speak directly to our hearts. And don't turn us loose until we're one thing people who write over all of life for me to live is Christ. It's in his name we pray.